A sound that until this moment she’d only ever thought of as what home sounded like—the deep rumble of a forge’s bellows—tolled the death knell.
The rat was readying his fire, preparing to pour it into her mouth.
If this didn’t work, she’d be dead. No way in hells was she letting that happen.
Hadyn remained still and small…and worked a knife out of where she’d hidden it on her person.
She was not going out this way.
Chapter Seventeen
The corridor wasn’t big enough to shift.
At least that meant the people who’d trapped them here couldn’t shift either. Rune needed to plan his first move carefully. The dominoes would be unstoppable after the first was struck. He mentally sifted through what he knew in quick flashes.
Mathai had been the leader of the Alliance since they’d been established almost two hundred years ago. Rune’s experience with the man meant he knew the red dragon shifter’s reputation of cold calculation wasn’t exaggerated. At the same time, Rune had never seen Mathai get directly involved. In anything. He delegated and he threatened, but someone else always did the dirty work.
All of that meant he might not be a trained fighter, but given the man’s leadership position—dragons tended to respect physical power above all else—Rune gave him the benefit of the doubt. The others with Mathai… The question was, were those people enforcers, trained to fight in both forms? Or stand-ins for the missing Alaz team?
Rather than attack, Rune stared into the darkness where Mathai’s voice had come from and waited. He even added in a slow blink and a furtive glance over his shoulder, as though fearful now that he was cornered.
Sure enough, the shadows undulated, and a man stepped slowly into the faint glow of the lantern nearby.
The older dragon smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. It never did. Mathai used smiles as though he’d been told he needed to in order to appear normal, almost like the movement was a forced action.
“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Abaddon.”
Rune said nothing, waiting for Mathai to come closer. At the same time, his ears were tuned to the nine people behind him. Fighting hadn’t started yet, but it would any second.
Mathai’s gaze flickered brighter red. “We have…many questions.”
I bet.
“I’d rather take you alive.”
Implying Mathai would kill him later, probably with a lot of torture involved. “Of course. You need to know where I hid all those mates.”
Mathai’s expression slipped slightly but then returned, stretching his stiff skin tighter. A mummified body had more give in it. “By the way, where did you find that lush piece of unturned mate you used as bait tonight?”
Electric shards of shock snapped through Rune’s system. They knew. Fuck, they knew that Hadyn was here with him, had helped him sneak in. They had her.
He’d screwed up. Royally. If she paid the price…
Only with monumental effort did he not show the sudden rage scorching through his veins. Anger not just at the man in front of him, but at himself for letting her fall into their hands. Coming off as unperturbed was the biggest performance of his life. “She found me,” he said. “Though she’s useless. Her fated mate died years ago. The mark on her neck is barely visible now.”
Mathai chuckled. Not amusement so much as knowing, like he kept an important secret and was happy to rub Rune’s nose in it, like a dog’s nose in its own shit.
Rune refused to ask the question.
Mathai stepped closer. Eerie stillness held sway over the corridor behind him. Waiting was always the hardest part of a fight, especially for dragons.
Mathai held up a pair of handcuffs, dragonsteel no doubt. “Put your hands out. Come peacefully now, and we might keep the pain to a minimum.”
Rune said nothing.
“We won’t harm the people with you. You have my word.” The twitch at the corner of Mathai’s mouth gave away the lie. Rune didn’t give a shit, but he pretended like he did.
One more check over his shoulder showed most of those people—half of whom couldn’t defend themselves from shifters who were bigger, stronger, and faster—watching him and watching the other men who’d come for them. He held out both hands for the cuffs.
“On my signal, fight or run like hell,” he shot the thought at the others.
Mathai wasn’t stupid and approached with caution. Rune even let him get the cuffs around his wrists and click them in place. Which meant the other man actually relaxed, stepping closer.
“Protecting others. That always was your weakness—”
Rune moved. Shifting only his hands, the cuffs dropped to the floor with a clang. A little trick he’d learned. Before his body was whole again, if he held the shift long enough, he was essentially not solid, those mirage like waves were…nothing.
Reforming, he lashed out with a fist, but punched thin air as Mathai moved. The older dragon hopped back, but didn’t stay back, lunging for Rune with a wild snarl.
He was fast. Damn fast. Rune ducked and punched, threw an elbow that landed with a satisfying crack only to have Mathai spin in a roundhouse kick that landed in Rune’s solar plexus hard enough to knock him off his feet and send him sliding down the hall on his ass.
He was up in an instant and striding toward Mathai with deadly purpose as the other man came at him. Vaguely, he was aware of the sounds of fighting going on down the hall, but his entire focus remained on the assailant in front of him. They went at it hard, trading punches and blocks, testing each other out, ready to take advantage of a single slipup.
Rune managed to block and grab Mathai’s wrist, twisting the man awkwardly as he stepped behind him and landed a well-placed kick on the back of his knee. The old man went down, and with his other hand Rune backhanded him, which laid the man out. The crack of his face against the floor a sound of pure satisfaction.
He went to slam his heavy boot into Mathai’s face with all the force of his dragon, but Mathai rolled out of the way and was up facing him in a flash. He swiped a hand over his face, staring at the blood coating his hand as though he’d never seen his own before.
A boom blasted down the hallways, almost seeming to rock the foundations of the mountain itself.
Mathai’s eyes flashed crimson fire, and Rune sneered. “That’s backup, asshole.”
The red dragon shifter cocked his head in a snake-like slither of a move. “Then why are they having to pound their way in?”
…
Hadyn fought back the sting of bile trying to churn out of her gut, holding her breath against the putrid panting overhead.